During the period 23 March to 13 June, MC inspection teams have carried out more than 255 thousand inspection tours to control the prices at the commercial establishments in all regions of the Kingdom. The inspection tours included hypermarkets, food supply shops, wholesale and retail markets, luxury stores, medical devices outlets, pharmacies, steel, cement and building materials stores and gas stations.
During these inspection tours, MC inspectors had detected 19,460 violations, of which 5,360 violations related to excessive prices. Consequently, instant fines were imposed on the violators.
The inspection teams carried out direct monitoring of commodity prices through the Electronic Price Monitoring System. Through this system, 217 commodities can be monitored instantly and compared with the prices of the neighboring countries. Instant fines are imposed in case of any unjustified excessive prices of the goods and products.
The number of inspection tours are listed as follows: The Eastern Region 42,414, followed by Riyadh 40,564, Makkah 35,820, Najran 25,989, Qassim 25.157, Hail 21,209, Madinah 12,478, Asir 10,545, Northern Borders 10,299, Jizan 9,705 rounds, and in the Al-Jouf area numbered 9,271, Tabuk 6,995, Al-Baha 5189.
The instant fines are listed as follows: Makkah 4,600, followed by Riyadh 4460, the Eastern Region 2362, Jazan 1402, Madinah 1230, Hail 1062, Qassim 1040, Asir 846, Al-Baha 591, Al-Jouf 564, Najran 465, the Northern Borders 431, Tabuk 407.
The Ministry of Commerce continues to receive the consumers’ reports and complaints round the clock through MC Consumer Call Center (1900), or through the application of Commercial Violation Report, or via the Ministry’s website.